Richard C. Levin, dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, was named the 22nd president of Yale University yesterday, following a 10-month search.

Levin, the Beinecke professor of economics at Yale, will take office as president on July 1 and will be officially inaugurated at a traditional ceremony in mid-September. Levin will succeed Acting President Howard R. Lamar who temporarily ran the university after Benno C. Schmidt Jr. abruptly resigned last June.

"I love this place," Levin said at a press conference yesterday. "I've been here for 23 years as a student and faculty member. I couldn't be more thrilled."

The choice of an insider for the Yale presidency may reflect the desire of the Yale Corporation, the university's highest governing body, to select a candidate already initiated into the Yale administration, which was rocked last year by the resignations of three of the university's highest officials.

Levin is familiar with Yale's fiscal problems and graduate school concerns, including negotiations with the Graduate Employees and Students Organization, formed in the wake of strikes and protests by Yale teaching fellows in recent years.

"I would not characterize it as a crisis, but obviously it's a management problem," Levin said.

Yale, which reportedly expects a $22 million budget deficit this year, is struggling to keep down costs while undertaking expensive renovations of many of its neo Gothic buildings.

Enumerates Priorities

Levin said his priorities as president will include balancing the university's budget, improving the physical condition of the campus and obtaining increased public funding for the sciences.

"I think it's a reflection that the Yale of today and Yale of the past 30 years is not what people years ago might have thought Yale represents," he said. Levin will be the first Jewish president of Yale, which once maintained quotas limiting its number of Jewish students.

Levin, 46, received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1974 and was named to the economics faculty that same year. He was the chair of the Economics Department before being named dean of the Graduate School last spring.

"Richard Levin is truly a 'citizen' of this university. [His] warmth, integrity, and steady judgment will make him a great President," Lamar said.

Early reports of the Yale selection committee's secretive deliberations had not mentioned Levin as a leading contender. Some professors and alumni had said his relative lack of upper-level administrative experience and his relative youth made his appointment unlikely.

But Levin was a candidate from the beginning of the search, according to Vernon R. Loucks Jr., a senior trustee on the Yale Corporation. Loucks said that Levin emerged as the front-runner after a field of hundreds was narrowed to three earlier this month, the Associated Press reported.

Colleagues of Levin expressed great satisfaction with his selection. "Levin combines, to a unique degree, the qualifications we have found most important," said search committee participant Marie Borrof in a written statement issued by Yale. "He knows the University well, and...his remarkable acumen will enable him to see to the heart of apparently insoluble problems and find new ways of tackling them."

Harvard Provost Jerry R. Green said of Levin, "He's a good economist."

Yale's search for its 22nd president began July 1 when Lamar was named acting president. Four senior professors, eight trustees and a faculty liaison comprised the committee, which was initially expected to announce its choice in January or February.

Levin got his undergraduate degree from Stanford University in 1968 and studied politics and philosophy at Oxford University, where he earned a B. Litt degree.

This story was written with Associated Press wire dispatches.